This invention relates to towel dispensers and, in particular, to an adapter suitable for converting a dispenser designed for handling single sheet towels to a dispenser for handling towels in continuous rolls.
A typical single sheet towel dispenser has a housing with an internal support tray for a stack of individual sheets. These sheets typically are of paper and may have a Z-fold configuration or a compressed C configuration. There is an access opening in the housing, and a dispenser slot in the tray which permits a user to reach through the opening and grasp an edge of a towel at the dispenser slot to pull the bottom towel from the stack and out the access opening.
Another form of conventional towel dispenser is used with a roll of paper and a mechanism, typically a lever and gear drive, for moving the free end of the roll outward through a slot for grasping by the user to tear off a piece of the towel.
There is an increased demand for roll towel type dispensers as they require less refurnishing and rolls are often lower in cost then stacks of single towels. Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an adapter which can be readily inserted into a conventional single sheet towel dispenser to permit use of a roll, rather than having to remove an existing dispenser and replace it with a new roll dispenser.
The utilization of the adapter of the invention provides for dispensing of roll towels without the conventional handle. Such a configuration satisfies the handicapped code requirement for access. If the conventional lever is used, the positioning of the dispenser normally needs to be lowered so that the lever is available to a wheelchair user, which requires repositioning the dispenser on or in the wall.
Other objects, advantages, features and results will more fully appear in the course of the following description.